- The increase in crimes involving guns and the associated gang violence came to a head in 2019, as the battle for the city’s lucrative drug business raged on. Several homicides were attributed to the epidemic, and shootings and gun-involved crime became routine in a city where until recently, firearms were rarely a factor. Gangs from southern Ontario have set up trap houses, and as quickly as one is taken down and those involved are arrested, another one takes its place in another area of Thunder Bay. Police and the city have pleaded with the province for help to combat the issue, mostly falling on deaf ears until recently.
- The plight of Bombardier’s more than 1,000 employees darkened in 2019, when the company announced it would lay off up to 550 workers as transit contracts in southern Ontario began to run out. Premier Doug Ford has met with company officials and employees and promised to help. Late in the year Bombardier announced refurbishment work would lead to the callback of up to 80 laid-off employees in April 2020.
- Former mayor Keith Hobbs left office in 2018, but was still making headlines a year later as an extortion trial involving him, his wife Marisa and Mary Voss, landed in a Thunder Bay courtroom. The trio was accused to attempting to extort the purchase of a house from a victim, whose identity is protected by a publication ban. A verdict is expected in February.
- Students and staff at Hammarskjold High School endured months of uncertainty after a series of threats forced board officials to close the school on multiple occasions. Two suspects, an 18-year-old female and a 14-year-old male, were eventually arrested and the threats came to an end.
- After six years of uncertainty, the James Street Swing Bridge saga finally came to an end in 2019, after the Supreme Court ruled CN had to live up to the terms of a 1906 agreement that called on the railway to maintain the bridge to vehicular traffic in perpetuity. Refurbishment work began almost immediately and the bridge, which closed in October 2013, reopened to vehicle traffic in November.
- Former city councillor Larry Hebert made headlines for all the wrong reasons when he was arrested in November and charged with attempted murder. Police alleged Hebert attacked and threatened a female at a Vickers Street residence. The 72-year-old remains in custody at the Thunder Bay District Jail.
- A controversial plan to build a 55-unit transitional housing facility on Junot Street raised the ire of many in the neighbourhood, worried that it would add to the drug problem that has already invaded a nearby public housing development. Coun. Albert Aiello, who runs the adjacent Thunder Bay Boys and Girls Club, was also vocal in his opposition.
- Thunder Bay Police, acting on a damning report from the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, announced they would re-open investigations into the deaths of nine Indigenous people, after the report indicated the cases were closed far too quickly.
- The fate of Dease Pool was decided in December, when city council voted in favour of spending more than a quarter-of-a-million dollars to demolish the aging facility. The city did not open the south-side pool in 2019 and said it would cost more than a million to bring the facility back up to a usable status.
- Liberal Patty Hajdu was easily re-elected in Thunder Bay-Superior North in the October federal election and was returned to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, this time as minister of health. In Thunder Bay-Rainy River, first-time Liberal candidate Marcus Powlowski held off former city councillor Linda Rydholm, running for the Conservatives, to capture a seat in the House of Commons.
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